#that are probably unpopular opinions

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[artsymeeshee]

[banjo-bugs]

I truly genuinely believe they would get along so well

[bridoesotherjunk]

Okay, so it's been a handful of days since I've seen Venom 3.. and I think I've finally got my thoughts together.

This review will have spoilers, so it will go under the cut.

these are all my opinions, so don't take my word as gospel or anything...

Anyone who knows me and my blog knows how much I've loved these movies since 2018, so to see me not ranting about the third Venom movie should be evidence enough how I feel.

I... don't feel like this was a satisfying conclusion to the Venom franchise. I really feel like there was so much more that could have been done, and should have been, instead of what we got.

I truly feel that introducing Knull into the story was a mistake. The first 2 films were so much smaller scale. Expanding all the way to the fucking symbiote god after only having done Carnage just felt like such a massive leap. And they really didn't do much with him anyway.

It felt like they included Knull because they were obligated to. Like Sony made them in order to have a weird spin off involving Knull trying to kill stuff. I don't know. He didn't do much besides tease future movies where he's the villain again. And that's kind of boring...

I will sound so narcissistic saying this, but I truly feel that the story I came up with, where the villains of Venom 3 are former Life Foundation employees angry at Eddie for ruining their lives, made way more sense. In terms of scale, you know? Much less "huge universal threat" and more of the small scale "threat to Eddie and Venom specifically" type story. Even Riot, being a threat to the Earth, was smaller scale than Knull. Knull is just too much. Too big. Too unfocused. It felt like too wide of a net. It felt generic, i hate to say it. It just felt like every other dumb ass gritty movie where the bad guy wants to destroy all life as we know it. (And quite frankly, he could have been taken out of the movie and not much would have changed. Venom and Eddie could have been hunted by the xenophages for any number of reasons.)

The part of the movie that I enjoyed most was the beginning. The part that felt like Venom. Where we saw Eddie and Venom working in sync to free those dogs. I loved that. I loved seeing how far the two of them have come and how well they work together. .. seeing their journey in a montage later? That felt... lackluster. After seeing them literally working together just an hour earlier in the movie, it felt kind of cheap. The way the story ended for these two didn't feel like a victory. It felt like the Avengers Endgame "well we gotta get rid of this character because their contract is up" situation.

The movie was definitely a fun time. I enjoyed myself watching it. But I was left feeling a sense of "That's it?" That I haven't felt since Avengers Endgame.

I'm happy that Tom Hardy got to do these movies. I absolutely will forever adore the first 2. They're fun, they're goofy, they're gay, and I love them. .. but this third one just... yeah. I'm disappointed.

I will always love Venom. That much is not going to change. I love these two gay losers and I'm so happy I got to have them in my life. They brought me so much joy, and so much brainrot, and I will miss the fuck out of them.

[ladykeyleth]

I don't know what to do. What's the end goal of all of this? Am I really just supposed to keep chasing and consuming power wherever I find it? To what end? And will it actually ever be enough?

Bonus:

[knifefightandchill]

RESIDENT EVIL 4 (2023)

It's ok. i've got you.

[shinidamachu]

Very specific Inukag type of angst I wish I found more in fics because it just hits different: Kagome slowly becoming indifferent to the love triangle drama and Inuyasha getting heart broken because he realizes he's losing her.

[darkstarofchaos]

Okay. While we're talking about EarthSpark S1 problems that have been made worse by S2. Why is Megatron special?

One of the weakest parts of EarthSpark for me has always been the fact that Megatron is the only Decepticon known to have defected. Later on, Cons like Breakdown, Tarantulas, and even Starscream added some nuance by showing them willing to risk themselves for non-Decepticons, though understandably, none of them were willing to defect at that point. But even though such Cons clearly existed, none of them defected along with Megatron, or at any other point during the war.

And Megatron's own defection was just... It's painfully obvious that he was developed to be a Good Guy and didn't have a lot of thought put into what he was like as a Decepticon. By his own admission and Starscream's assessment, he was a violent leader who ruled with fear, but all it took to make him change sides was... Seeing a human care more about his side than he did? That's it? And if that is why he changed sides, he clearly took the wrong lesson away from that, because he still doesn't care about what used to be his side. Instead of trying to do better by them, he abandons them. And then all he has to do to make Optimus trust him is... Scan an Earth altmode. Really.

It all feels very weak to me, and doesn't adequately explain anything. Did Megatron make any attempt to be a kinder leader, or did he just defect immediately after seeing the Error Of His Ways? How did we get from "damn, I don't care about my guys enough" to "my whole cause is corrupt, I'mma go now"? Did he ever try to use his position as leader of the freaking Decepticons to end the war peacefully or steer them onto a better path, or did he just wash his hands of them the moment he considered himself morally superior to them? If he did try to use his influence before bailing, how did he change so much so fast that none of his officers wanted to follow him anymore? Why did he give up on his entire faction and not bring any of the more open-minded Decepticons with him?

There are so many questions that either aren't answered or only get vague suggestions of what might have happened, and the answers we do get aren't enough for me to buy Megatron's redemption. It all feels too fast and too easy, and I do not understand why he could defect from the faction he led but less committed Decepticons just didn't.

And now all of these issues are worse than ever, because all the nuance the other Decepticons had is gone. Now it's just "Y'know, Decepticons. They're evil." Apparently not all of them, because Megatron is still hanging out with the Autobots, Con insignia and all! I ask again, why is Megatron special? Why does he get to change but all the others have to be flat and evil?

The real-world answer, of course, is that he never changed. He was conceived as a good person and ally to the Autobots, and that's how he's going to stay. But you cannot have a "Cons are just evil" story while the ex-leader of the Cons is walking freely in the Autobot base. Megatron's entire character is only possible with the assumption that Decepticons are capable of changing, and trying to revert to Cons Evil makes his redemption weaker than ever. Because it's so painfully obvious that he was written to be a good person and his dark history doesn't actually matter.

[thatwrestlingnerd]

Hangman not winning is genuinely my favorite thing, how feral is he going to get before he finally gets his match lmao

[museaway]

kudos don't determine worth

[borgialucrezia]

peaky blinders — 4x06 created by steven knight

[wondrousmay]

I love the way Endo-sensei is writing and developing Loid and Yor’s relationship. Since I headcanon them both as aroace, their relationship makes a lot of sense to me. Love comes in many different forms and I like that SxF is taking its time to explore different types of relationships!

[thegreatcaptainusopp]

Water 7 was like specifically engineered to hit on every single sensitive spot Usopp has and honestly he almost under-reacted with how nuts the circumstances were for the moment that he snapped:

1. They just came off a fight where Aokiji knocked them around like it was nothing, where he had this realization:

So he’s going in already feeling super inadequate, more than he usually does (which is a lot already).

2. Relatedly, up to this point fixing the Merry was his job because they didn’t have a shipwright yet. Her being unfixable probably felt, to him, like a personal failing because he was the one in charge of fixing her

3. The Merry was most like another crew member to him because he’s the one who worked on her most, AND he was the only one who saw her klabautermann at this point

4. The big elephant in the room here is that Kaya was the one who gave them Merry. So, you know, he’s attached to her most for this reason too

5. There’s also the fact that this probably hit on the very specific trauma of his mother’s death, because she also got sick enough that everyone deemed her unsavable.

6. On top of all that, it also hit on his trauma regarding his dad and abandonment: he doesn’t want to repeat that and feel like he abandoned a crew member who needed him.

7. Speaking of abandonment, seeing a situation where, in his mind, the crew leaves someone behind who is now deemed useless probably touched on a lot of his own fears about his place on his crew and own perceived usefulness

8. He had also just been brutally beaten twice on the same day and is pretty badly injured, compounding both feelings of usefulness and aligning him with the merry in his mind in terms of physical state.

9. He had also just lost the money they needed to fix the Merry, again compounding the feeling that he was useless AND he was responsible for the Merry not being fixable

10. He woke up to the crew, who had already processed the news, telling him about it AND that a decision had been made, which made him feel like it was a him vs them thing

There’s probably more I think but yes, it is completely unsurprising that he fell apart so spectacularly

[nellisconfetti]

i’m rereading all for the game as one does and i’m on the first foxes vs ravens game and i feel like we don’t talk enough about how good of a goalkeeper Andrew is. the ravens take 150 shots and he only misses 13, that’s 137 saves against the first ranked team, Neil says it at the beginning of the game “the only reason the foxes weren’t getting completely slaughtered was because Andrew had their goal”. and that’s while he’s going through withdrawal AND while he’s not putting any effort at practice, so that’s Andrew at his worst and just relying on raw talent. Andrew doesn’t start really trying and putting effort at practice until his talk with Neil after he’s back from his talk with Itchiro, just imagine how good of a keeper he’ll grow to be. basically i just think that this fandom overlooks him in the talks of who is the best exy player, i know you all collectively agree that it’s Kevin, but i feel that’s also rooted on their positions, and how a striker is always gonna get more attention than a goalie even though i feel like it’s objectively more difficult to stop a goal from getting in than to score it, specially in exy with their big ass goals. so yeah this is just my rant on how i feel that Andrew is the best exy player on the series.

[mavenbeeee]

i know everyone is praising ify for how he’s playing this season and i do think he is slaying but some of his moves kinda bother me😭😭😭i didn’t like how he took all the drug juice i feel like brennan obviously had a plan for how that was gonna work with persimmon dead AND everyone would’ve got a cool moment with the drugs but he kinda just took it :/ obviously it worked out and it did lead to that convo w liv and russell but idk i felt like jacob in that moment and i’m not even playing LMAO like i would rather have just seen what brennan was gonna do and got to see how everyone was gonna take it